Hello, it's Anthony Chadwick from the webinar vet welcoming you to another episode of Vet Chat, the UK's number one veterinary podcast, and I'm really honoured and pleased to have Arielle Griffiths on the line today. Arielle is a veterinary surgeon, but he's also the founder of Just Be Kind Pet Foods. So we're gonna be talking a little bit about that.
This is a plant-based diet and plant-based diets generally. But first of all, Arielle, great to have you on the podcast. Thank you.
Thank you very much for for inviting me, because yes, something I'm very passionate about. So thank you. Obviously veterinary surgeon with an accent that would suggest that you didn't qualify in the UK or maybe you did.
No, 30 years ago actually, I've been a vet, so 30 years ago. No, it was last year because we're January 2024. So 30 years ago last year.
Graduated from Hostepoort in South Africa. So, yes, South African with a French mother. So.
It's got a great reputation on the sports as well, haven't it? It has, and it still seems to have a very good reputation. I, I feel so fortunate.
I really do. My husband and I both graduated from Hoten. We both look back, in fact, we're talking about it.
The, the group of students that graduated with us, we keep in contact with so many of them. And all of us have such fantastic memories of our time there, but also the careers that it's given us have been fantastic. The training that we had was so good.
You're right. I think the . You know, when I had my own practise, if you got a South South African or an Australian or a Kiwi vetting, you knew you were going to get a good vetting on the whole, so yeah, and of course Bruce Stevenson helps us quite a lot with our chairing webinars as well, so there's a lot of South African links in there.
Yeah, thank you. That was a very kind thing to say. But obviously, qualified and then came over to the UK.
Did you spend some time in South Africa and then came over and you worked mainly as a small animal vet, didn't you first? We, we did. We actually worked in Zimbabwe for 6 months straight out of vet school, which was an experience that was because they were desperate for vets and my husband is Zimbabwean.
And we worked in a very remote area and it was terrifying. We were operating on animals that we, because there were no vets, we were operating on zebra and some mango monkeys and We were removing lymph nodes from from dogs, which we were doing crazy things straight out of med school, which, and we had no proper anaesthetic. I remember we just had thiopentone and these animals used to sleep for about 3 days.
So that was our, our first experience for 6 months. And then, then we came to the UK as I had a, I have a French mother, so I had a French passport even though I've never lived in France before. But it gave us the inroad into the UK.
So yes, 2, well, it would be 30 years this year that we'll have been in the UK. And when I was a student, I spent 6 weeks in Zimbabwe as part of my training and experience. What a beautiful country as well and I remember going to the vet school in Harare, and it was actually very similar.
It'd been built, I think, with some EU and, and, Commonwealth money, and it was a replica of the school in Murdoch that I visited 36 months later when I went to Australia to do some training. But I remember going there at the time and thinking, oh my goodness, this vet school is better equipped, and a better building to work in than the one in Liverpool. Because it would have been the only one in the whole country.
So it would have been given, yes, no, and as you say, such a beautiful, beautiful country with the most wonderful people. I just loved it. Our veterinary nurses were all, they were all men, veterinary nurses who we had.
And it was very sad. One of them died of AIDS quite shortly after we we left Zimbabwe. So very different world, completely different to, to the world?
It was, it was a little town called Mutari, which is actually on the Mozambique border. It used to be called Utali, but it's a beautiful, very isolated place, but such a wonderful community of people who used to bring their animals to us. And so now, what a lovely introduction.
I didn't get over to the eastern side. I think it was that close to the eastern Highlands. That's correct.
Yes, we went to the Eastern Highlands and visited there were no mobile phones in those days and we were the only vets there, so we were permanently on court. We always had to be quite close to the phone, so we couldn't ever travel too far, but Eastern Highlands, we could at least leave a phone message and just say we'll be back in an hour or two and and that wasn't too far, so you're right. Yeah.
And, and obviously came over and did small animal practise, and I, I remember you talking about working for the PDSA and one of the things that sort of hit you during that time was how many dogs were overweight and obese. And that was a bit of a light bulb moment for you, wasn't it? Correct.
So, so in my, in my career, I've always chosen to be a GP vet and we have 4 children. I wanted to be a mom to them as well, so I've only ever done sort of part-time veterinary, I suppose you could say. I've never worked full time in a practise and, and always choosing to be a GP vet, but it was while working, oh, it was 6 years ago now at the PDSA in Nottingham and Leicester and where you see about 50 people a day.
And I love this interaction with people that there was one day where I had 4 animals to put to sleep, not just dogs, but cats as well, with obesity related cancer, severe arthritis. It was a very hard day that day, and it made me come home and say to my family, right, that's it. I've seen enough.
I'm going to start pet slimming classes. And I threw myself into this with such a passion. I, I, I bought a, a domain.
I set up a website. I, I joined Slimming World myself to understand the whole process of, of how to help lose weight through classes. I bought a huge scale.
I hired the local village hall, put up Facebook ads. I sat there with my little dog and my, my, I had this beautiful little logo. And obviously nobody came because no one wants to be told that their animals are fat.
It's a bit like a doctor saying to a mother, take your child, your child is obese. Nobody wants to hear that. But, but, but I, I learned so much from it in that in order to start these classes, I thought, gosh, I know nothing about, about pet nutrition at all.
We don't do we as vets. We are not. And I think doctors are exactly the same as you're taught which drugs to use and as vets which diets to dispense or treat the dog with, but you're not actually taught the basics of nutrition.
And so I thought if I'm going to be teaching people how to feed their dogs healthily, I better understand it myself. And so I did every nutrition course going. I did Marge Chandler's course twice.
I did Doctor Mike Davies's nutrition course. I went to the Willows and Doctor Euru. I did his course and When I couldn't get enough from the UK, I went to Germany because the, the more I realised the more plants you added to a dog's diet.
But like us, the healthier they would be. And there were two very big plant-based companies or vegan companies in Germany that was 8, 10 years ahead of the UK, and this is 6 years ago, called Veg Dog and Vegan for dogs, and I, I just, it was a light bulb moment for me. I had a a pharmacist son.
Who came as a teenager, he was about 18 or 19, came to, to his Zimbabwean dad and me, South African and said I want to turn vegan. And we were both very concerned as parents. My, my husband was quite shocked because obviously meat is such a big part of, of his life.
But but for me, I was concerned for my son because I thought as a young teenager sudden he's going to worry about. About the food system, he's going to worry about our planet and we don't want our children to worry. I knew he'd be fine nutrition wise because he's an intelligent young man and he was studying pharmacy and but I'd always admired that.
So, on the day after my fifty-second birthday with everything I had learned and admiring my son, I turned myself vegan, never having even been vegetarian before then. And turned our little dog vegan with everything I'd learned from from these companies in Germany, knowing that it was safe because it was being done in Germany. I had so much to prove because my husband obviously also being a vet and he's actually a vet in the army, so his thinking is, is very rigid.
And and he's fully supported me once he realised actually we're doing the, I am doing the right thing. So I had so much to prove. And once I felt I had it 100% right for him, then I began opening it up to other owners and set up a new website called Just Be Kind Dog Food.
Promoting plant-based dog nutrition, and it went from there, and this was 5 years ago and What I have learned in those five years has opened my eyes enormously. I never, I never realised that in my 50s my career could take on a role like this, but that I could learn so many new things in my 50s. That benefit dogs so enormously with plant-based nutrition.
We're still young, Ariel. I'm a 50. I'm a fellow 50 something and once you decide to stop learning, that's when you grow old.
But actually if you decide you're going to continue to learn, then you never grow old. Yes, absolutely. And, and I learn every single day.
I have people who can't because now that's all I do. I've actually stopped doing work as a GP. I stopped actually 2.5 years ago because I suddenly realised that this business.
Well, this business really, really took off when all the evidence-based medicine studies began being published. So we've got a professor Andrew Knight who works at the University of Winchester Department of Animal Welfare, and he began producing published paper after published paper, but not just him, there were published studies that came about in 2022. From, the University of in Canada of Guelph, another vet there, showing that dogs studies done on thousands of dogs maintained on vegan diets could actually live up to 18 months longer and be healthier.
And this evidence-based medicine ended up with nationwide news in 2022 and my business just took off, and My, my passion took off. I never realised how incredible plant-based diets could be, not just for the health of our planet, but for the health of dogs. If I knew what I'd known 30 years ago, my career as a vet would be so much more satisfying because, yes, it's, it's the products that that I have that are so, so.
Good. I know I was I was mentioning it to you earlier is is one product. It's, it's interesting, Ari Arielle, because, you know, I, it was something I was very passionate about as a student because I went, used to go to mealy vet group in Clithero and Accrington to see practise and their Leo obesity diet sales would spike for the two weeks I was there because, I would chat to the clients after the vet had finished and just, you know, promote the obesity diets.
But you know, 30 years later we still have, if not, if, if not, an increasing amount of obesity. We've not been able to really . Sort that problem out, have we?
And I think you're right, you know, one, do we have enough training? I did a lot of the, the Hills courses when I was a fairly young vet, going through the five levels, which were a nursing course, but I felt it was important that I as a vet knew. And then obviously as a dermatologist, I would use diets, because a lot of dogs would come in with diarrhoea, they'd all.
You know, intestinal problems, but they'd also have skin problems because of course the intestine is just an imagination of the skin. So quite often a dog would come to me with a dermatology problem and as an aside, cos I would do a thorough history, I'd say well what is the quality of the poo like? And they'd say, oh it's always a bit runny.
And actually putting them onto a a you know a hypoallergenic diet or or an an allergenic diet. These dogs would improve immensely because you were taking some of the allergy out as well, and I know when we met at London Met show, you were telling me about some of the great cases you've had of dogs with skin problems and with gastrointestinal problems that have also improved. Obviously with plant-based diets because most of the allergies are things like wheat, you know, chicken, beef, etc.
So if you can use something that's novel and not grain based. Often these dogs, I would imagine would would do better as well. Yeah, definitely.
So it was actually Doctor Sue Patterson who imported the very first plant-based diet into the UK in 2018. She imported a diet called Solar Vegetar through a company called Vettris, at one of the dermatology companies that would import CLX wipes and all the the skin products. And and she was selling gear on her virtual vet's website and When I obviously entered this space and I was importing the the foods from Germany that are excellent, this one's called Green Crunch and Greta that are extremely palatable, completely balanced foods, but I realised, oh, actually in the UK we've got a company, Berice that's importing the solar vegetile.
So I began selling it as well on my side because it is a beautifully balanced plant-based or vegan diet. And actually the sales through through selling it as a vegan diet soared. So they actually took it off to to Patterson's site and and sell it and we're, we're the 5th of January, we're into 2024.
I've actually completely sold out in the first four days of January. There is no more solar vegetile at the moment in the whole of the UK. That's how popular this diet has become, and I had to put out an email this morning and I saw just before this podcast, I've had so many owners who have Contacted me to say, oh, what can we use?
I mean, I do have alternatives, but, but you're so right in that if a dog is going to suffer from an intolerance, the, the most common intolerance right up there, the very first one is beef, and obviously beef has the same DNA as dairy, so dairy would be the very next one. But after that, even before wheat, is actually chicken and eggs having the same DNA, so anything. That would cross react with the chicken, turkey duck will be the same up there as well.
Then we have wheat, and then we tend to have soya. We tend to have the rabbit, the fish, they and the corn. They all fall within the, the top 10 intolerances.
So solar vegetar and and the diets that I stuck would be free of of all the grains. So no wheat, no gluten. And, and no soya, and then obviously no animal proteins or or no dairy, obviously, because they are, they are vegan diets.
So, so with a, with a true plant-based diet, what you can do is you can actually eliminate all of those intolerances, these allergens that dogs can suffer from completely, including the soya. And, and provide a perfectly palatable, nutritionally sound diet. Vets do worry about dilated cardiomyopathy, which came about the concerns of dilated cardiomyopathy came about with grain-free diets where these meat-based grain-free diets were taking out the grain, the rice, the the corn and replacing it with pea protein with legumes and lentils.
And they were seeing increased cases of of dilated cardiomyopathy in dogs that didn't normally show this. So with our, our vegan diets, what we have is a is a greater understanding. That there is a concern with legumes and dilated cardiomyopathy, so we have to ensure that all the nutritionally balanced vegan diets have the right levels of taurine, have the right levels of its precursor, the thionine, one of the amino acids, the right levels of vitamin B and vitamin D as well is also so important obviously for calcium absorption and heart health, and omega 3s, which This to me is just something that I just adore is where you get omega 3s from.
In plant-based or vegan diets, you actually get the omega 3s from where fish get their omega 3s from, which is microalgae. And you've got these, these fantastic farms of of this harvested one species, schizommytrium or it's called, one species of microalgae that fish normally would eat. It's very high in omega 3s, DHA and EPA.
And you've got these hugely sustainable farms. I know they've just started one in Scotland, but they, they started many in Holland. So you've got these farms on the land that are taking in carbon dioxide, releasing masses of oxygen, producing this lovely oil that comes in a capsule that looks just like cod liver oil capsules, but obviously has none of the harmful.
None of the toxins that you get in in the liver of of fish because there's no cadmium, no lead, no mercury, none of the heavy metals, and and you end up with, with dogs taking these, it improves the skin phenomenal. We all take it as a family. My, my son at university used to have such terrible eczema and I used to give him so much fish oil.
And it never sorted it before his exams. It was always in his, in his elbows. He had such eczema.
And then when, when he, when he finished school, he obviously finished school now he's when he's at university. And when I turned vegan, I said, let's try these omega 3 algae oils. And he's never looked back.
And actually for Christmas, it was quite, we just joked because we all got a tub of algae oil as part of. They're all grown now. They're all in their twenties, but we all had their Christmas stocking and had the algae oil because, but, but I'm seeing the same results in dogs.
So everything about About plant-based foods is sustainable. We're not destroying our ocean in any way. We're getting every, every source in, in a sustainable way, which, but, but for the health of the dog, I think that's what's what to me is the most satisfying as a vet.
Do you want to become a part of the largest online veterinary community in the world? The webinar vet's membership is the perfect tool to easily complete your veterinary CPD or CE. Watch webinars anytime, any place, on any connected device.
Become a member today and explore our library of over 2000 premium quality webinars. We also care about the environment as well as your CPD or CE. That's why we plant trees for every one of our members.
To find out more, visit the webinar vet.com/m memberships or click on the membership tab on our website. Presumably with the dilated cardiomyopathy, you need to supplement with L carnitine as well.
Correct, absolutely. So all those, those diets that are commercial and formulated. Definitely have to have the the important addition of all of those ones.
The more and the more legumes that are in there, the the higher the the proportion of the taurine and the methionine. So yeah. Is your diet, you know, what are the main ingre ingredients.
Legumes and what what else would be in these German diets and the veres diet that you purchase? Yes, so, so because of this big concern that we have with peas and lentils causing dilated cardiomyopathy, I actually, it took me two years working with top nutritionists in Germany, and I actually worked with a man in Sweden who wanted to to introduce vegan food to Sweden as well. And we actually launched the very first, and I, I've done it through, so Vettris has been bought out by a company called Nexmune, which is also a very large dermatology company.
So they're the ones who now import solar vegetile. But, but they, they were importing solar vegetal tinned food, which I do have on my site, but that isn't fully balanced. It doesn't have that extra methionine, that extra al carnitine.
And what I really wanted was a tinned food that would, that would satisfy all the requirements and be fully balanced. So I worked with this this factory in, in Germany, launched a food called Give a Dog a Bean in November, about 2 months ago. On the 1st of November, I, I imported 10,000 tins and I'm down to about 200 or 300 tins.
So for a new product, and dogs absolutely love this. So this actually has no peas and it has no lentils, but it's called Give ado a bean because it's made from fibre bean protein. Which, I know we, we mentioned the London Vet Show, which is where I met you, but when I just arrived, I put up my poster of Give a Dog a bean and it mentioned that it's made from faber bean protein, and this lovely man suddenly appeared and he stood in front of me and he said to me, Where are you getting your faber bean protein from?
And, and I said to him, I said, oh, well, this is made in Germany, so it, it, it comes from Joe says, why aren't you getting it from the UK? He says, he says he's just caught the train. He's still got mud from Northumberland on his shoes, but he's a farmer who actually farms fibre bean protein in Northumberland to feed salmon.
Because it is such a sustainable protein source, it's extremely high in valuable amino acids, but not just that, because it's a legume and actually puts nitrogen back into the soil. So the farming of of fava beans used, I mean, I I said to him, that is brilliant. Well done using that in salmon.
Much better than using low fly larvae or fish to feed salmon because it's, that's not sustainable. But But equally, I'm seeing the same in dogs. Dogs absolutely love the fibre bean protein in the skierdo a bean, but it also has quinoa in it, which has a very high protein level.
It has hemp protein as well, which also has a very high protein level. And then it's got psyllium husks in it. So it's actually got.
Something that'll enhance the gut bacteria, plus it's obviously got all the, the, the important vegetables that you need to get this range of our 5 a day, which our dogs need as much as we do to enhance their gut microbiome as much as, as, as our gut microbiome. So we've got the carrots and the green beans. And papaya.
And so it's, it's an and and blueberries as well. So it's a very and sweet potato, very, very nutrient rich, fibre rich, but, but using all very sustainable sources. And then obviously you've got that important edition of the taurine, the Alanine is.
Mentioned the precursor to taurine the methionine, the vitamin Bs, the selenium, all things that are, are actually added to even meat-based dog foods, commercial ones will have these important additions. The cheaper grain-free diets, obviously, meat-based, will not incorporate extra taurine and methionine into their diets because it's a cost. There's a cost involved.
So they are the ones that are concerning about dilated cardiomyopathy. But but the fact that there's an awareness of it with with plant-based nutrition means that we then incorporate these extra supplements into the diet. Arielle, lots of food for thought, if you pardon the pun.
I think it is, interesting what you're doing with, with the plant-based diets. They're obviously growing in popularity, which I think is, is really, good, you know, we're we're talking about sustainability, we're talking about, eating less meat, you know, as people also are our animals as well. So, .
Yeah, I wish you all the best with the continued growth of the company. Thank you, thank you very much. It's, it's more my passion to promote plant-based nutrition everywhere.
I mean we have it in pets at home, have their own plant-based. Foods, butternut Box has a plant-based variety. Lily's kitchen bean stew.
So, so we're, we're seeing it growing remarkably and definitely is an option for, for vets to consider when they have any dogs with IBD or with with skin conditions, as you mentioned. But no, thank you so much, Anthony. I so appreciate the fact that You, you, you're, you're so far ahead in your, in this space as somebody who, who's interested in sustainability in the veterinary sector, and this is such an enormous part of being a vet and being sustainable is choosing these diets for dogs because it satisfies every requirement of sustainability.
But equally, the, the satisfaction of being able to, to give a diet that a dog can stay on for life, not just an elimination diet for 6 to 12 weeks, but for life. Means that you've got owner compliance completely because we have a we have puppy diet versions of of plant-based diets. There's Nyuchi and omni puppy and Beneva puppy.
We've got senior versions of plant-based diets. Omni senior and I've got a veg dog senior tin that that I'm importing from Germany. So, so we've actually got the full range to actually treat.
Yes, I, I have another site, Dogs Go Plant Based with, which is just full of information for vets who, who really wanted to, to learn more and hear more. So thank you. Thank you for this opportunity.
Thank you so much, Ariel, and thanks everyone for listening. Hopefully we'll see you on a podcast or a webinar very soon. Take care, bye bye.
